MUMBAI: Any hopes the Premier League bosses may have entertained of securing a massive mark-up in bid values for the the next round of Premier League media rights look to have been blown out of the water with Silicon Valley tech giants reportedly not ready to enter the fray.
While Facebook, Google and Netflix will not be submitting bids, Amazon could bid for one of the less attractive of the seven packages that went out to tender in September, The Guardian reports.
It is worth noting that all the hype and hoopla around the possible intentions of the big guns in the tech world kicked in after Facebook’s unsuccessful $608 million bid for the digital rights to the Indian Premier League cricket last year. This was subsequently followed up by Amazon snapping up rights to NFL and ATP tennis.
For the record, in the current three-year rights cycle, Sky and BT have, between them, coughed up a massive £5.1 billion to telecast the Premier League, which represents a 70 per cent increase on the previous contract.
According to the UK daily, the increase is expected to be far more modest this time, possibly only in line with inflation.
The bidding process covers 200 games per season between 2019 and 2021, which is 32 more games a season more than in the 2016-2018 cycle. In the previous cycle, Sky committed £4.1 billion on 126 games a season, with main rival BT picking up the remaining 42 games for £960 million.
Kieran Maguire, a football finance expert at the University of Liverpool, told The Guardian he did not believe the tech giants were ready to enter the market.
“That is just the Premier League talking up auction prices,” Maguire said. “It makes no sense for them to bid domestically as the UK is insignificant when looking at global strategy. There is some potential in overseas markets but there is still an issue of monetising subscribers – even Netflix hasn’t quite managed that yet.”
